The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Seoul Eastern District Court Panel Division.

The grounds of appeal are examined.

1. As to the ground of appeal on the completion of the prescriptive acquisition of traffic area

A. The provision of Article 245 of the Civil Act on the prescriptive acquisition shall apply mutatis mutandis only where the right to use another person’s land for the benefit of one’s own land continues to be used and expressed for a given purpose.

Therefore, the right of passage can be recognized only when the owner of the dominant estate establishes a road on the dominant estate and continues to acquire the prescription of the dominant estate for the benefit of the dominant estate in accordance with Article 245 of the Civil Code.

(1) In the event that the owner of the relevant real estate changes during the period of possession, the claimant for the prescriptive acquisition shall not be allowed to assert the completion of prescription on the ground that he/she arbitrarily selected the starting point of counting or occupied for 20 years or more retroactively, and the court shall recognize the starting date of the real possession as recognized by the litigation data, and determine the validity of the claim for the prescriptive acquisition based on the basis of the foregoing, in calculating the period of prescriptive acquisition.

In the meantime, in a case where the possession is succeeded in succession, the person who asserts the completion of the prescriptive acquisition has the right to assert only his own possession or, at the same time, both his own possession and that of the former possessor.

(see, e.g., Supreme Court Decision 97Da56822, Apr. 10, 1998). Such legal doctrine as to the prescriptive acquisition of ownership applies likewise to the prescriptive acquisition of the traffic area where Article 245 of the Civil Act applies mutatis mutandis under Article 294 of the Civil Act on the prescriptive acquisition of servitude.

In addition, the court shall consider the whole arguments and the result of the examination of evidence on the basis of logic and equity.